Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Evan Zimroth's COLLUSION: A Teen Ballerina's Unrequited Love for Ballet Teacher

Evan Zimroth's Collusion:
Memoir of a Young Girl and Her Ballet Master 

Collusion: Memoir of a Young Girl and Her Ballet Master
is Evan Zimroth's memoir about her unrequited love affair with F., her middle-aged ballet instructor, that began when she was 12-years-old. 
She wrote: "I wish I could know now, at this moment, whether the relationship was erotic for F., too." 


Not only was F.'s unrequited love attractive to Evan, but the fact that: "[...] his attention could always be withdrawn, that there was always someone else waiting to claim it - someone younger, thinner, more beautiful [...]" caused her to be more deeply in love with him.

R. Don Steele reiterated in How to Date Young Women for Men Over 35 what Evan wrote about her ballet instructor, which is that aloofness is attractive and that neediness is unattractive. 

F.'s aloofness was so strong that Evan wished that F. would have risked going to jail for statutory rape. She wrote: "F. never quite took that risk, although I imagined for years that he might. I wished for it." 

F. was unneedy to the point that when he did anything for Evan, which included hitting her with a cane, Evan felt that F. was giving her a gift, which made her want to give him a gift in return. She wrote: "[...] I felt thoroughly in love with him, as if he had showered me with gifts and I could reciprocate, give him gifts in return [...]"

Publishers Weekly wrote of Collusion:
Novelist and poet Zimroth (Gangsters) recounts her days as an adolescent ballet student and her masochistic relationship with her teacher, F., a famous Russian dancer. The story itself is compelling [...] Zimroth's memoir is an interesting backstage look at the seamier side of an art form, and it raises interesting questions about artists and mentors and the personal price of success. 

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